Accidental breaker trip
- DP Event
- Published on 3 September 2019
- Generated on 26 August 2025
- DPE 03/19
- 1 minute read
Undesired event
The watch keeping engineer lost his balance and his hand made contact with the shaft generator breaker push button.
Comments
The vessel was experiencing heavy rolling and pitching. The watch keeping engineer lost his balance and his hand made contact with the No.2 shaft generator breaker push button, thus opening the breaker and causing the loss of power.
The vessel has installed transparent covers over vulnerable breaker push buttons to avoid re-occurrence.
Considerations
- Although the incident could have been avoided by better protecting the breaker push-button, the DP system responded as designed.
- Most regulatory authorities require covers to be fitted on emergency stops which have the potential to impact operations.
- The vessel could have moved clear while still on Automatic DP, instead of changing to joystick control.
- With only one generator on-line on each bus, failure of one may cause a partial black-out. It is assumed that this was included in the operational philosophy and activity specific planning.
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The case studies and observations above have been compiled from information received by IMCA. All vessel, client, and operational data has been removed from the narrative to ensure anonymity. Case studies are not intended as guidance on the safe conduct of operations, but rather to assist vessel managers, DP operators, and technical crew.
IMCA makes every effort to ensure both the accuracy and reliability of the information, but it is not liable for any guidance and/or recommendation and/or statement herein contained.
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